Hey my lovelies! Today's book review is Shift by Em Bailey. Shift is a thriller with lots of twists and turns.
Title: ShiftAuthor: Em Bailey
Publisher: Hardie Grant Egmont
Pub. Date: September 1st 2o11
Date Read: May 8th 2015
Pages: 320
Rating:3.9/5 stars
Goodreads Summary: Olive Corbett is not crazy. Not anymore.
She obediently takes her meds and stays under the radar at school. After “the incident,” Olive just wants to avoid any more trouble, so she knows the smartest thing is to stay clear of the new girl who is rumored to have quite the creepy past.
But there’s no avoiding Miranda Vaile. As mousy Miranda edges her way into the popular group, right up to the side of queen bee Katie – and pushes the others right out – only Olive seems to notice that something strange is going on. Something almost . . . parasitic. Either Olive is losing her grip on reality, or Miranda Vaile is stealing Katie’s life.
But who would ever believe crazy Olive, the girl who has a habit of letting her imagination run away with her? And what if Olive is the next target? A chilling psychological thriller that tears through themes of identity, loss, and toxic friendship, Shift will leave readers guessing until the final pages.
Olive had a psychotic break a few months previous to the book starting, which made her ditch her cliche mean girl group of friends and become friends with a outsider called Ami. But when new girl Miranda turns up at school, she starts noticing how she is changing her ex-best friend Katie, for the worse.
Even though I did enjoy this book and rated 3.9 stars (4 stars on Goodreads). I have to warn you the book leaves you with quite a few unanswered questions and I am still unsure whether or not I liked the ending. As the synopsis describes there are quite a few shock twists and turns, that I guessed around one or two chapters before it happened.
Spoilers Below
Whilst reading the book I had a few theories going:
Theory #1
From the beginning of the book we know that Olive had a psychotic break, which made her leave her friends and become friends with Ami. I admit at first, I did think that it was going to be Ami that killed Katie out of some sort of jealousy. But then I noticed that Ami always magically turned up exactly when Olive needed her.
Theory #2
Because the book mentions quite a bit that Olive had a psychotic break, I wondered if after everything, Olive was going to kill Katie and then blank it out (spoiler for We Were Liars : basically what happened in We Were Liars, which I hated, though that was mainly due to the writing style) and blame it on this poor girl Miranda.
Theory #3
This one is similar to the one above and is closest to the actual truth. I thought maybe Olive had a multiple personality disorder and Ami was one of them personalities. And because Ami was more confident in what Olive wanted to do and say, 'Ami' would kill her and Olive would have no memory of it and blame Miranda.
I realised that Ami wasn't real around Chapter 13, due to the way she simply appeared in the mental institution. I mean if it took Olive awhile to get in, how would Ami get in without Olive or a nurse noticing?
The whole shape shifter element was a bit strange, due to the book making you doubt Olive's sanity, with her various mentions of her psychosis. Also at the end when Olive found her teachers necklace, did that mean that it was Katie, that did that? I just feel like that wasn't explained very clearly. And how did Miranda kill Katie? As it was supposedly a heart failure. I also feel like Katie's death was very quick. One minute she's in the corridor talking to Olive and a week later she's dead and the way they told Olive who is clinically depressed, in a normal conversation. They could have been nicer about that at least.
That is the end of this weeks book review folks! To be more up to date in what I am reading add me on Goodreads, Instagram and Twitter.
Please remember that I am currently doing my GCSE's so the next couple of weeks reviews may not be on time and on its official scheduled days.
Next Book Review: If I Stay by Gayle Forman
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